1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods of building personal relationships for both personal and commercial purposes and more particularly relates to facilitating electronic communication based on a personal contact.
2. Description of the Related Art
Developing personal relationships is often a socially or professionally rewarding experience. However, initiating contact with a stranger can be a stressful experience, especially for people who are shy or reserved. An initial face to face conversation can be particularly stressful, especially at the beginning of the conversation. At the conclusion of a face to face meeting, two people may be interested in further developing the relationship, but may not be comfortable with giving out personal contact information. Additionally, the personal contact may be very brief. Hence, providing personal contact information may be inconvenient or too time consuming or may be subject to errors in communicating the information during a brief encounter.
This reluctance may be due to a fear that if personal information is disclosed and the relationship does not work out, the person who terminates the relationship may need to deal with harassment by the other party. The reluctance may be attributed to a concern for privacy, convenience, or personal safety.
If the two people happen to meet again, for example because they live, work, or shop in the same geographic area, they may further develop their relationship to the point that they are willing to share personal information such as more specific contact information. However, they will not have this opportunity if they do not meet again. A method of facilitating electronic communication between the two people that allowed for further social exchange without disclosing personal information would assist in overcoming this challenge.
Conventional social networking web sites may assist in facilitating relationships, but they have limitations. For example, a subscriber to a conventional social contact website may create a personal web page including pictures, text, and perhaps video. Other subscribers to the social networking website are able to view the personal web page and initiate contact with the subscriber. However, conventional social networking web sites do not allow the subscriber to customize the content presented to each subscriber so that each person who visits the personal web site sees a customized set of elements such as pictures, text, and video uniquely tailored for each new subscriber. In addition, conventional social networking web sites do not provide resources for establishing a business relationship.
In a business setting, it is beneficial for people to develop personal contacts with potential customers, clients, suppliers, and partners. However people are often pressed for time, and do not take advantage of the opportunity to develop a personal contact when first meeting someone. One may honestly desire to develop a personal contact for business reasons, but may want to do so at a more convenient time or location. For example, a professional at a conference may want to meet others who practice in the same line of work. However he may have a busy schedule during the conference that prevents him/her from taking time to converse with others. In such situations, business cards are typically used to exchange personal information so that future interactions will be possible.
Although business cards provide certain personal information, they are not easily customized for a particular, unique contact. For example, a sales professional may want to provide product information about one product line to a new contact without confusing the contact with product information for another product line. In this example, a business card may provide a URL that the contact may use to view a company website. However, the company website will not be customized for a specific product line. Of course, business cards with different URLs pointing a contact to a particular portion of the web site may be used but such use is often impractical
The sales professional may want to further customize information provided to a contact by providing a promotional item or by providing semi-confidential information, such as test results for a new product, that is appropriately shared with certain contacts, but not with others. Websites are not effective in providing such customization because generally anyone can view the content of a website. If the semi-confidential information was posted on the web site, it could be easily obtained by people who might exploit the information. However, to build a relationship with a new contact, it may be advantageous to share the semi-confidential information with the contact. Special login IDs or passwords may be used with secure web pages. However, communicating the login information to each potential contact is difficult.
From the foregoing discussion, it should be apparent that a need exists for an apparatus, system, and method for facilitating electronic communication based on a personal contact. The apparatus, system, and method should ensure that the parties are not required to initially disclose personal information. Additionally, the apparatus, system, and method should provide a method of providing information customized uniquely for a particular personal contact.